The background description provided here is for the purpose of generally presenting the context of the disclosure. Work of the presently named inventors, to the extent it is described in this background section, as well as aspects of the description that may not otherwise qualify as prior art at the time of filing, are neither expressly nor impliedly admitted as prior art against the present disclosure.
Medical products can be sterilized in many ways. For example, the medical products can be heated in an autoclave (e.g., using steam at temperatures above 125 degrees Celsius and at pressures of about two atmospheres). Alternatively, the medical products can be treated chemically (e.g., using ethylene oxide). Alternatively, the medical products can be irradiated (e.g., using gamma rays having radiation levels of 2-7 Mrad or 20-70 KGray).
Medical instruments are typically considered properly sterilized when a minimum amount of radiation is absorbed by the instruments. To ensure that each instrument on a pallet receives the minimum amount of radiation for proper sterilization, manufacturers often over-irradiate the instruments. Over-irradiating can be expensive and time-consuming. Further, radiation results cannot be stored in nonvolatile memories based on floating-gate technologies (e.g., EPROM, EEPROM, and flash memories) since these memories are erased by the high levels of radiation required to sterilize medical instruments.